


Science and Art

by apollos



Category: South Park
Genre: Age Difference, Angst, Biology, Crying, Depression, Drugs, Drunk Driving, M/M, May/December Relationship, Mental Health Issues, Minor Violence, Past Character Death
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-06-13
Updated: 2015-09-23
Packaged: 2018-04-04 04:06:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 16,296
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4124994
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apollos/pseuds/apollos
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The way Stan plays dead is the intersection of science and art, but Kyle's not buying it. High school is over, after all.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> this is my try at a more typical angsty stan/kyle story. it'll be pretty short, like just a few chapters, and it's a cliche mess but oh well. recommended listening is every modern baseball song ever.
> 
> EDIT: now with a companion mix (http://8tracks.com/ap0llos/science-and-art)

Stan didn't walk with his class at graduation. He hadn't known that was an option, but he guesses it was, since he didn't show up and didn't face any repercussions for it. When he came around the school the next day to collect his diploma, the clerk in the office looked sad for him. He wanted to punch her in the face.

He has no illusions nor fantasy about senior year, or high school in general, really. The literal first day of his freshman year his father had made sure of that; driving drunk he'd wrecked his car, killing both himself and the Tweak family. It drew animosity towards Stan from the entirety of the town of South Park. Wendy had dumped him for not showing up to Tweek's funeral, Craig had blacklisted him from all social functions, Cartman started directing some of his prejudice towards Stan for having a dead, drunken redneck of a father. Never mind his father died, never mind the toll the shame would take on the Marshes, never mind. Stan had learned a lot—too much, really—about life that August, and what shreds of happiness he had reclaimed from the debacle of his depression when he was ten had eluded his grasp once again.

Stan is not a lot of fun to be around.

But animosity has faded; the attitude of the town has shifted from "the son of the drunk that killed that poor family" to "the son of the drunk that killed that poor family (but said in a sympathetic tone.)" His mother takes a pretty little cocktail of pills that kept the guilt at bay; Stan, too. Shelley booked it out of there, married young, had a kid, and now Stan has graduated high school.

So, Stan doesn't  _care_  that he didn't walk with his class, doesn't  _care_  that he doesn't have a picture of him awkwardly shaking the principal's hand, doesn't  _care_  that he spent the whole day lying in bed and staring at the wall like some sad cliché. Kyle had texted him a running commentary—Red's heels were too high and she fell, Kenny mooned the crowd, Cartman's valedictorian speech was straight-up bullshit. Stan didn't have the heart to tell Kyle that he didn't care, still doesn't, and now today is the day of Kyle's graduation party and Stan is realizing that he cares entirely too much. Funny how that works.

Kyle, like Shelly, is leaving. Not to get married and have children, but to go to school, to do what should be done. His parents, both fully alive and functional, are ecstatic, are throwing him a graduation party, and Stan is invited. The first one invited; he's known about this party for months. It leaves a sour taste in his mouth, how excited Kyle has been to share his future with Stan. Enough future for the both of them, really. There is a lot, so much, that Stan wants to say to Kyle, that he does not know how. So he bites his tongue until it bleeds.

At Kyle's request—always at Kyle's request, always—Stan arrives at the Broflovski house an hour early to "help set up." In reality this means that Stan sits cross-legged on Kyle's bed in a half-meditation pose while Kyle combs through his closet for the perfect outfit to wear. Stan doesn't get it; Kyle has dyed his hair an electric blue yet he's carding through hundred-dollar dress shirts with minimalist patterns and is trying to decide between a collection of loafers in various boring colors. Stan doesn't get anything, maybe. Not about Kyle.

"I'm thinking this one," Kyle is saying, pulling out a salmon shirt. It looks nice against his pale skin, his bright hair.

"I like it," Stan says.

" _Aesthetic_." Kyle touches his hair. "My family won't get it, which is great."

"Your family isn't that bad," Stan says. He means it. He leaves off the  _compared to mine_  that he wants to add at the end of the sentence.

"It's the principle of the thing, Stan." Kyle is pulling off an old South Park Cows t-shirt; Stan tries not to look, but it's hard not to, and probably more suspicious if he averted his eyes. So instead he drinks in the sight of Kyle's skin; it's milky, the comparison apt. Milky and freckled and probably soft, and Stan wants to touch it, always has, but he's afraid as usual.

"Whatever. How long do you think this will last?" Stan is already itching to be back in his bed. To be alone in a dark room, to shut his brain off, to sleep for fourteen hours straight, like he has done every night this week.

Kyle shrugs. Now he is hunting for pants. "Skinny jeans will work, right? It's not that formal. Or should I do chinos? My mom would like it better if I wore chinos."

"I thought you wanted to piss off your family."

"Eh, not my mom." Kyle pulls the chinos from the closet, and there goes his basketball shorts, exposing his y-fronts. This Stan averts his eyes for. "She worked hard on this party, you know. The least I could do for her is wear a goddamn pair of pants. Gray loafers?"

Stan shrugs. He's wearing jeans and a flannel shirt, his usual attire for everything. It hadn't occurred to him to dress up for a graduation party; his sister's had coincided with the disaster that had been his father's death, so. There hadn't been a party so much as there had been a trip to the graveyard.

"Gray loafers," Kyle says, answering his own question.

After Kyle is dressed and his hair done and his skin moisturized, he sits next to Stan on the bed, who has been providing appropriate answers to whatever Kyle has been saying and leafing through an old Time magazine on Kyle's bedside table. He keeps it there like his room is a fucking doctor's office and if it was anybody else Stan would judge them, but it's Kyle, so Stan only feels charmed at the formality with which Kyle treats his bedroom. The proximity of Kyle, all done up, his blue hair tamed, his green eyes on Stan, his pink skirt and khaki chinos and gray loafers, makes Stan heat up a little. Makes Stan want to tug at his collar. But nonaction, like always, is the easiest route, and so Stan allows Kyle to sit beside him and does nothing about it. He'd probably allow Kyle to stab him in the stomach without trying to stop him or even asking why, if Kyle so fancied to do so.

"I'm glad you came," Kyle says, putting a hand on Stan's thigh. Is that platonic? It's so close to his dick. Does Kyle know what he's doing? All these questions, and the one Stan asks is,

"Why wouldn't I come?"

Kyle pats Stan's thigh. It feels paternal, which in turn makes Stan feel a little sick, fatherless for four years as he is. "You didn't come to graduation," Kyle says, and the repeated use of the word  _come_  is dismissing all of Stan's disgust at the paternal feeling, and now Stan is trying to ring that back in, trying to think of his dead father, because this is not the time to get aroused. Kyle's voice is so soft. It's amazing, the range of his voice; Stan only speaks in monotone, maybe a slight shift for whatever emotion he needs to convey,  _maybe_.

"Graduation is lame," Stan says.

"It was so lame." Kyle's hand is off Stan's thigh; Kyle is springing up; Kyle is puttering around his room and doing last-minute tidying-ups like he's going to tour it for fifty cents to his party guests. Stan wouldn't put it past him;  _come see the South Park High School salutatorian's room, come see his hair dye, come look at his computer history_. Stan would pay the money five times over just to eat up all the information he already knows. "Cartman's speech, ugh. He advertised his business, Stan! Who does that? Most speeches are just like, blah, blah, blah, family, blah, blah, blah, future, blah, blah, blah, follow your dreams, and Cartman is like, come to Cartman's Cleaning and get fifty percent off if you say you heard it here! And that was like, it. That was  _it_ , Stan."

"That's so Cartman." Stan wonders if he ever says anything of substance anymore. He's flipping through the magazine on Kyle's bed and wondering if Kyle has other, dirtier magazines elsewhere, if people even still use them. Then he's thinking about Kyle jacking off, anywhere and everywhere, and he heaves a long, suffering sigh before laying on his back on the bed with the magazine over his face.

Soon after, Kyle's mom comes in and says that Kyle's grandparents have arrived, so the party is officially started. Stan lets Kyle flit out and go entertain, lingering in Kyle's room a bit longer. He wants to lay down on this bed forever, fold himself in the covers and sleep through the party, until Kyle returns to his room, asks Stan what pajamas he should wear and tucks himself in bed beside him to recount the party to him. This is how Stan hears about life, now—through Kyle's re-telling, colored by Kyle's bias. It's just fine to Stan. At least Kyle adds color; everything Stan sees is monochrome.

But he goes down to the party eventually, after a few more people have arrived and he can blend into the fray. There are streamer done in Kyle's college's color, finger food, soft music coming from somebody's iPhone plugged into a speaker—Ike's, Stan thinks, judging by the cracks across the screen. It's hard for Stan not to feel disillusioned. Everything feels as cheap as house parties for middle-income children always do, decorations purchased from Party City and food from the deli section at the local grocery store. Stan feels pangs of secondhand embarrassment. He would never want this for himself even if he had the option.

Not many of their classmates have shown up—they're all having their own parties for their own families, converging at a bigger one the upcoming weekend at Token's house. Token doesn't even like parties, but he has the nicest house and is friends with Craig. Stan hasn't been invited, though Kyle has, because Craig is still blacklisting him from when Tweek died. Craig and Tweek had gone out that summer and, according to the gossip, had just tried French-kissing the day Tweek died. The only other teenager that does show up is Kenny; Stan seeks him out and drags him out back to smoke pot. Stan doesn't drink.

"Dude," Kenny says in protest, rolling the joint anyway. "I've been here, like, twenty minutes." He lights the joint and hands it to Stan. Kenny doesn't smoke pot, just deals it; Stan hands him some money in return.

"Yeah, well, I've been here for two hours." Stan inhales and closes his eyes. Sweet, sweet relief.

"That's a dangerous amount of time to spend with Kyle."

"I know." Stan's eyes are still closed.

"Are you ever going to tell him?"

Stan opens his eyes, now, to glare at Kenny. "No," Stan says. He takes another drag off the joint.

"Why not?"

"Because." Stan sighs, smoke curling out of his lips. "He doesn't, you know. Deserve it."

"Bullshit, Stan." Kenny sounds mad. Kenny, like Kyle, has an impressive range of vocalizations. "Everything you say is straight-up  _bullshit_. God—Kyle loves you, you love Kyle, just, like, smash yourselves together already."

"It's not that simple."

Kenny stands up and tugs at his hair. Like Stan, he keeps it long, long enough that it forms a sort of wave towards his shoulders. "It is too that simple. I'm so sick of this. It's cliché high school bullshit, Stan, and it's time to move on."

"I can't move on." Stan studies the joint; it's easier than looking at Kenny. "Kyle is—"

"I'm not saying to move on from Kyle. I'm saying to move on from the cliché high school bullshit of dancing around each other and not saying what you mean. I had this same conversation with Kyle yesterday, at graduation, you know. I've been having the same conversation with you guys for years. Everybody! I've been saying the same thing to everybody. Why do I have to be the wizened one, huh? 'Cause I die all the time I have some higher knowledge? That's bullshit, too. I don't know anybody. I wish people would stop asking me for their fucking relationship advice. I've never even had a girlfriend."

Stan doesn't have anything to say to this, really, so he doesn't. Kenny says that Kyle loves him, and Stan knows he loves Kyle, but it's all complicated. First of all, he doesn't know if he believes Kenny, because Kyle has never acted anything but friendly and, on occasion, paternal. Second of all, somewhere between their supposed mutual love exists a black hole created by Stan's general shittiness as a person that sucks in any happiness they could have. Stan wants Kyle to leave, to escape the gravitation of the black hole—and here is where his metaphor falls apart—but at the same time, Stan wants to keep sucking Kyle in forever, as if he's feeding off his life force.

Kenny has left Stan alone with the joint, now, stomping off and mumbling to himself.

Stan is stuck in South Park, the only ghost his father's accident has left behind. His soul is here on repeat, he is doomed to walk these streets, to garner fear and sympathy. His father, his sister, the Tweaks—they have moved on. His mother—she's been set free by the pills. The pills don't work for Stan; nothing works for Stan; not even Kyle, apparently, it seems.

This train of thought slows and crashes and burns after a while. Stan watches the sun set and listens to the sound of the party through the back door, which somebody has left propped open. It was probably Kenny, leaving a not-so subtle hint. Stan thinks about leaving. Leaving the party; leaving town; killing himself. It's all the same in the end, and he's just about made up his mind when Kyle appears beside Stan and says, "We're gonna eat cake now, dude."

"I hate cake," is Stan's automatic response.

Kyle sighs and sits down. He takes the joint from Stan's fingers, where it has died out, and re-lights it with the lighter Kenny has left behind, taking a drag. "No, you don't," Kyle says. "You just say that."

So Stan doesn't say anything. He instead listens to the distant sound of cicadas, which he has always found beautiful and which always calms him. The world is a weird sort of blue. Maybe it's just the joint, but Stan feels like something inside of him that had been raging has stilled itself now, like the ocean after a storm. It's eerie.

"It's easier for you to do nothing," Kyle says, and Stan proves him right by continuing to exist without putting any effort into anything, dumb ocean metaphors rolling around in his mind. Breathing is automatic, after all. "And I give you your space, but." Kyle exhales. "Maybe I've been wrong for four years and space isn't what you need. Look. My grandparents and shit are in there; can't you just come eat some cake and we'll talk later?"

Kyle tugs on Stan's arm; his touch is a flash of warmth, and Stan is getting up and following him, some sort of doll brought to life. It's easier to follow Kyle than resist. The stupid cake, handed to him by Kyle's mother on a cheap plastic plate with a cheap plastic fork and a helping of coffee ice cream on the side because of course Kyle's mother knows that that is Stan's preferred flavor and they buy it especially for him at all the events, is stupidly delicious.

Stan tries and fails to elude the party and go out back again after cake, but Kenny keeps him pinned to the couch by involving him in a conversation with Kyle's uncle from New Jersey about wildlife in the Northeast. Kyle's uncle is gay but single and also is a biologist. That was something that used to appeal to Stan back when things appealed to Stan; studying animals for a living. But when you graduate with a bare minimum of a G.P.A. and plan on getting the first menial job you can, well, your options are limited.

At least the conversation with Kyle's uncle is nice enough. For some reason, Stan thinks about fucking him while he talks. He has a comb-over and glasses, completely unappealing, but Stan visualizes him topping then taking Stan out somewhere to eat and teaching him the scientific names of all the animals. A kind of sugar daddy. It would be nice, maybe, if this were anybody but Kyle's fucking gay biologist uncle from New Jersey.

People start to leave. The ones that haven't travelled far are the first; the ones that have, like Kyle's New Jersey uncle, are the last. Then it's Kenny, who slips Kyle some shrooms as his 'real' graduation gift, and then it's just Stan, Kyle, Kyle's parents and Kyle's brother, standing among the detritus of a party in the living room and talking about how well it went.

"Time to clean up," Kyle's father says, interrupting his wife's ranting about some offense Kyle's aunt made to her and Ike. Kyle's mother nods and gets up; Ike follows. On his way he unplugs his iPhone from the speakers and the disillusionment returns to Stan in waves. Seeing the party decorations is actually making him feel sick to his stomach.

"I'm just gonna—" Stan throws his thumb at the stairs.

"Fine, but my mom's going to get mad." Kyle lingers, like there's something he needs to say to Stan, then shakes his head. He touches Stan on the shoulder, kind of awkwardly, and the idea that maybe Kyle was thinking about kissing Stan runs across Stan's mind, too fast to catch.

"Let her," Stan says, and then he's walking up to Kyle's bedroom.

This time he does fold himself in the sheets, first stripping down to socks and underwear. He hadn't been planning on spending on the night but suddenly going home sounds impossible and he wants to hear Kyle talk about the party. Wants to hear his version of events. Stan falls asleep before Kyle returns to his room, dreams about Kyle's New Jersey uncle trying to teach him about the  _Magicicada septimdecim_  while Stan blows him and when he wakes up it's to the sight of Kyle's dignified face lying in wait.

"Stan," Kyle says, sighing. His breath is warm and smells like cake. Stan wants to eat it out of his mouth, which is sort of gross, but his mind is still stuck in dreamland. "Do you want to do the shrooms now?"

Stan shakes his head. "Too tired." He yawns.

Kyle shrugs. He wiggles around in bed, and then his chinos are being dropped off the side. Following suit are his loafers. And then he is just wearing the pink shirt and the y-fronts and the covers are too hot.

"We need to talk," Kyle says. He sits up in bed. Stan wants to ask him why he stripped if he wants to talk, but instead Stan sits up, too.

"About what?" It's easy to play dumb. It's easy to play dead. It's not easy to look Kyle in the eye.

"You know what about, Stan!"

"I really don't." He does.

Then Kyle is kissing him.

Maybe this is kind of a talking, Stan thinks, as Kyle sucks on his tongue. He's doing it like he wants to communicate something to Stan, at least. Kyle's hands are on Stan's shoulders, Kyle's moving his mouth down Stan's face and to his neck, and Stan is wondering when Kyle got so good at this, wondering if they're going to have sex, wondering, wondering, not doing anything, not talking.

"We need to talk about that," Kyle says, and now Stan's neck is cold, air conditioning blowing on it in lieu of Kyle's lips.

Stan doesn't say anything.

Kyle touches his face. "Stan," he whispers, his fingers gliding down Stan's face. "Stan, Stan, Stan."

"That's my name," Stan says, when Kyle's fingers get to his mouth, letting Kyle hook them on Stan's bottom lip. He wants to devour them.

"I  _miss_  you."

"I'm right here." Stan takes ahold of Kyle's hand and kisses his fingertips.

"That's not what I mean." Kyle's voice is so strong, yet he is shaking and trembling and quivering, looking just how Stan's brain and heart feel. "I mean—Stan—it's past the point of excuse. I love you. You love me. Whatever you think is blocking this from happening—it's not."

Stan shakes his head, his mouth still at Kyle's finger. He moves forward, enough that their knees touch, and every part of his body is aching, aching, aching. Tears are coming up to his eyes. He feels the need to eject something—tears, semen, blood, vomit, his heart, something.

And then he's sobbing.

Kyle wraps his arms around Stan.

Stan has no illusion or fantasy about his time in high school; it sucked, it sucked, it sucked, and his dad fucked up his life and then Stan fucked it over, and now here he is, crying in his best friend's bed at his best friend's graduation. The best friend he should be fucking, or doing shrooms with, or  _laughing_ , at least. Moving forward. Moving on. With, alongside, Kyle. But Stan is an anchor holding Kyle down in an ocean of tears, Stan is a black hole sucking all of Kyle inside, Stan is the shittiest person alive.

"Get it all out," Kyle is saying into Stan's hair. "Get it all out so we can talk." His hands are gripping Stan so tight; he smells so good; Stan's head is spinning. Kyle is an entire galaxy and Stan is just the black hole that's eating it alive. Destruction is imminent and sirens are blaring.

Stan does not get it all out and they do not talk. Instead, Stan falls asleep in Kyle's arms, still crying, his mind lost in a dark, confused fog. And this time when Stan wakes up to the sight of Kyle's dignified face, his eyes shut in sleep, Stan's heart seizes up. He gets out of bed as gently as he can. He stands in the middle of Kyle's room in the darkness. He considers writing a note, then decides against it.

Stan walks.


	2. Chapter 2

Though he holds no fantasy nor illusion about high school, saying Stan isn't one to wax poetic about anything and everything would be a straight-up lie. When he walks out of Kyle's house he sees that the stars are in full bloom in the sky; if he hadn't exhausted his supply of tears, leaving him thirsty and fuzzy-eyed, he would cry. Some part of him wants to believe that the beauty of the night sky is a sign pointing him back to Kyle, the North Star hovering over his house, but every other part of Stan reminds him that the damage has surely done is irreparable and that it's a better idea to just keep walking.

The way home is an old, memorized path, one Stan does not have to think about. This leaves room in his mind for other thoughts to tuck themselves into and so they do. He thinks about the feeling of Kyle's lips on his skin; he wonders if the brief contact was enough to leave a hickey. He thinks he's the one that should be leaving marks on Kyle, terrible, ugly bruises and scars to match how he has hurt Kyle emotionally, but the thought of a beaten, broke-down Kyle forms a lump in his throat.

Stan goes to check his phone for the time but finds it dead in his pocket. He doesn't remember the last time he charged it; he only ever calls and texts Kyle, his mother, and Kenny, and even then only to get his hands on some pot. Memories are swarming back to him, Kyle's balmy backyard while Kenny told him that Kyle loves him, sweet cake icing, the heaviness Kyle held in his eyes. It's making Stan's head swim but by now he is home, he is safe to walk into his dark, hollow house and collapse by the doorway in the spot Sparky liked to sleep in before Sparky died a few years ago.

Sparky is buried in the backyard, a ceramic headstone Stan made himself marking the spot. When Sparky died Stan had cried for days, had been ultimately more upset than when his father had died, and that weighs as heavy as the headstone on Stan's conscious. He hasn't been able to think about getting another dog.

His mom finds him in the morning, crouching down in her nightgown and shaking his shoulder. The look of concern on her face dissolves as she comes to realize Stan is not dead or comatose, just sad. Their relationship has been strained since Randy died—Stan used to be so close with his mother, used to love to sit with her and just talk about their days, but now there is a tension between them. The reverse happened with Shelley; she calls their mom constantly, though she never comes to visit. Stan guesses it's inevitable. Randy's cold in his ground but his legacy lives on, hot as ever.

So his mother doesn't talk to him, just pats him and nods and moves to the kitchen to begin breakfast. Stan isn't hungry. He sits up and pulls his phone out of his pocket once again, staring down at it. The light coming in through the windows tells Stan's it's probably mid-morning; Kyle has certainly woken up to an empty bed by now with no notice of where Stan has gone. He is probably worried, probably considering the worse, that Stan has flung himself out of Kyle's window or slit his wrists in the bathroom. In reality, Stan has done what a coward would do, what only Stan can do: chosen this path.

It's a depressing start to an uneventful day.

Or so Stan thinks, because a few hours later there is a knock on the door. Stan has been lounging on the couch and half-watching television, his phone still dead, miserable. But then comes the knocking, or more aptly the  _pounding_ , Stan's stomach twisting. This could only be Kyle.

He remains frozen on the couch while his mother answers the door and lets Kyle in.

Stan stares at the television screen until it's not a screen but Kyle's midsection, his hands balled into fists on his hips. He's wearing the shirt from yesterday, but this time with short khaki board shorts, half of the flesh of his thighs visible, red hair curling up. Stan can't see his face—doesn't  _want_  to see his face—but he can feel the pure fury rolling off of Kyle, making its way like tendrils around Stan, constricting him.

"I should have known," Kyle is saying, his voice dangerous, low and quiet. "I should have known you would have run, Stanley Marsh, but we are talking whether you want to or not."

Stan cannot say anything. He focuses on Kyle's leg hair.

Kyle bends over so that his face came into Stan's field of view, blue curls falling over his forehead. Kyle's mouth is twisted, his cheeks red with anger, his eyebrows drawn together. Faint feelings of something—shame, guilt, regret—flare up in Stan.

"You are not a lost boy in Neverland or whatever you think you are. You—the real you, the Stan I remember from just a few years ago—is still in there somewhere."

Stan wonders if Kyle has rehearsed this, if maybe that's why Kyle didn't come to his house immediately. Stan continues to not say anything, though he does close his eyes.

Which was a mistake, because Kyle pries his eyes back open for him. Stan's eyeball swims in its socket before settling on Kyle's face. "Wake  _up_ , Stan."

"I am awake," Stan mumbles.

"You know what I mean."

Lying to Kyle is unfathomable. Stan remains silent.

Kyle sighs and pinches the bridge of his nose between his fingers—a habit he picked up from Stan long, long ago. "You're a fucking zombie," he says.

"Not really." Stan wishes he were a zombie; he wouldn't have to think. He has qualms about eating peoples' brains, but he guesses that at the point you become a zombie instinct would take over. He would be a shell of his former self, his soul escaped to some higher plane—it's his ideal existence.

"Yes, really." Kyle's hand cradles Stan's face, pushing his bangs from his forehead. Stan hasn't showered in days—his hair must be greasy, he can see a smidgen of disgust on Kyle's face. "Can't we just talk, Stanley? That's all I want to do. I want to have a nice, serious conversation. We don't have to solve anything right now, we don't have to hook up, we can just talk."

Stan closes his eyes. It sounds nice, what Kyle is proposing, but also utterly impossible. Ludicrous; Stan and Kyle sitting at a table across from each other, negotiating their relationship and Stan's sadness like a business deal, signing a contract at the end. That sort of stuff is for another boy in another life. Stan tries to muster up the courage to tell Kyle that he thinks it's best if they simply separate forever, but he only gets out a, "No," when:

"God _damm_ it, Stan, can you feel  _this_?" And there are tears in Kyle's eyes, all the emotions Stan cannot show cropping up on Kyle's face, when he swings his fist at Stan. His knuckles collide with Stan's cheekbone; there is a crack; there is blood and agony in a beautiful burst that blinds him.

He should be mad, he should be screaming and punching Kyle back, but all Stan is thinking about is fireworks. He looks up at Kyle in awe.

Kyle swings again. This time Stan blocks it with a flat palm, the pain against his hand pleasant. He wants Kyle to punch him forever—he wants Kyle to hit him, to destroy him, totally and completely. He wants Kyle to wipe him off the map. He yearns for it with an intensity that surprises him. He will get on his knees and he will beg for Kyle to kill him.

But Kyle isn't hitting him anymore; Kyle has crumpled and deflated like a balloon four days after a birthday party, his bloodied knuckles shielding his eyes as he cries. Stan knows from past experience that Kyle is an ugly crier. Stan knows that if he peels away Kyle's hand, he would see puffy eyes and flushed cheeks and snot rolling down swollen lips. And Stan does that, because that is exactly what he wants to see right now, Kyle's ugly, crying mug.

It is everything Stan expected. It is gorgeous.

"Yes," he whispers, a belayed answer to the question, Kyle's hands in his. "Yes, I can feel that."

Kyle looks at him. The expression on his face twists from despair into disgust. Kyle actually spits on the floor. "You disgust me, Stan," he says, wringing himself from Stan's grasp and getting up. He doesn't bother to fix his hair or his clothes or anything that Stan would expect Kyle to do—he just walks out the living room, out the front door, out of Stan's life.

So this is how it feels, Stan thinks, to be left behind. One part liberating, infinite parts maddening and saddening.

After a few minutes of quiet vibrating, Stan gets up from the couch to go find his phone charger. He needs to call Kenny and ask for something. When he locates his phone charger he plugs it into the outlet by his bed and sits there on the floor. He ponders if he could squeeze out an orgasm based solely on the memory of Kyle punching his face, but it doesn't make Stan hard so much as it makes him feel alive, so when his phone turns on Stan brings up Kenny's contact and calls him.

Kenny answers on the very last ring. "What do you need?"

Stan considers what drugs the fucked-up and fucked-over use. "Heroin," he answers.

He can hear Kenny rolls his eyes over the phone. "I'm not supplying you with heroin, Stan, I don't even have heroin. I have ecstasy, shrooms and pot. What do you want?"

"Pot," Stan sighs into the phone. "Come over."

"Alright, alright." Kenny hangs up.

When Kenny comes over he brings the pot directly to Stan's room, Stan's mother answering the door, and Stan thinks that's nice of him. Stan rolls the joint while Kenny walks around examining years-old artifacts. Stan hasn't updated much since his father died; his old little league and flag football trophies are collecting dust.

"Lighter."

"Here you go." Kenny tosses it from the pocket of his shorts; Stan fumbles with the catch and it falls to the floor. "Man, I remember when your whole life was catching things."

Stan shrugs and lights the joint, bringing it to his lips. "That was, you know. Before."

"I know." Kenny comes over and sits on the bed. Stan has a nice view of his legs and his feet. Kenny has one pair of shoes, beat-up converse, that were once a bright yellow color but are now covered in drawings and grime. Stan can make out a doodle of a dick and the first few digits of a phone number from where he sits. Kenny's legs are kind of hairless, or maybe he's just tan. The exact opposite of Kyle. "What's up?" One of the shoes come swinging towards him.

"Nothing."

"Liar." The shoe connects with his cheekbone. "You're bruising, here."

"Oh, yeah, that." Stan tips his head back. "Kyle hit me."

"What?" Kenny leaps off the bed and in a weirdly fluid motion is sitting cross-legged in front of Stan. "Why?"

Stan shrugs. "Uh, because I suck?"

"You do not suck, Stanley Marsh. You  _think_  you suck." Kenny sighs; he sounds tired. Stan feels sort of bad. "Isn't that, like, spousal abuse? Hitting you?"

"We're not married."

"You're a fucking killjoy, Marsh." Kenny leans in and takes the joint from Stan's fingers, pinching it improperly. "Enough of that. Tell me what happened with Kyle."

So Stan does, the words spilling from his moth like drool from a bum on a bench. He doesn't think it's an exciting story, but to Kenny it appears to be some sort of emotional roller-coaster of a tale, his body literally jerking around when Stan hits the highs and lows. When all is said and done Kenny taps his bottom lip while Stan plays Whale Trail on his phone, holding his finger down to see how high the whale will flip into the sky, the music nice and mind-numbing.

" _Well_ ," Kenny says eventually in a sing-song voice, drawing out the word. "Why don't you just talk to him, Stan? It's your only option. We're adults now."

Stan stares blankly at him, his finger still pressing down on the screen. The Whale Trail song fills the silence between them.

Kenny tugs at a wild lock of hair and stands up. "I'm done. I'm fucking done! This is ridiculous! Call me if you ever get this shit sorted out."

And, like Kyle, Kenny leaves without saying goodbye. He takes the weed with him, too, even the joint Stan had rolled, which flips Stan's opinion of him from nice to mean. Stan turns his phone off and lays down on the floor, spinning around so he can put his feet up against the wall, his hands on his stomach. He's lost two friends in the past two hours, literally if not metaphorically.

"Well, I guess I deserve that," he says out loud to nobody in particular.

Stan expects some great revelation to come to him over the course of the next few days, but of course, nothing does. The only thing that happens is that he takes a bath, plays more Whale Trail, half-watches more television and jerks off to the memory of Kyle punching him, which is enough for him to have an orgasm, apparently. It's uncomfortably hot; he lounges around without a shirt on and twitches whenever he catches sight of himself in the mirror. At one point he was muscular.

His mother flits in and out, going to work, coming home, never bothering him, keeping to herself. Stan has uncomfortable memories of hearing her sob her heart out in her room when Randy had died, thinking that nobody could hear her. Stan would stay frozen in his bed; at one point, Kyle was there, and Kyle had clamped onto his side and had not let go until the sound of his mother wailing ceased.

The desire to tell somebody—somebody unbiased and uncolored—about it all starts to build up inside of Stan, though. His mom is out of the question; Stan doesn't think she even knows Stan likes boys. He's not coquettish about it, but he also hasn't been in a relationship or even  _kissed_  somebody since Wendy broke up with him. He's been pretty much all about Kyle, who fills every role Stan needs a person to play, from sibling to father to friend to, in some weird way, lover. Maybe that's fucked up; no, that's probably fucked up; whatever, whatever, whatever. Kyle is essential as methadone.

Moving down his limited list of friends, Stan realizes there is one person that he can rely on to sort his life out, or at least that he believes is uncolored and unbiased enough to spill his guts to. He's been afraid to reach out to her until this point, mostly for the knowledge that, like Kyle, she will not stop once she sets her mind on something. Unlike Kyle, Stan (no longer) wishes to fuck her, so maybe Stan can evade her if it gets to be too much. He doesn't know. He just knows that he's six types of desperate and more than a little depressed and so he scrolls all the way to the end of his contacts and composes a text to Wendy Testaburger.

 _need ur help_.

Stan doesn't get a response until an hour later, when he is watching television and eating some chips from a bag without really tasting them. His phone vibrates and he picks it up, his heart skipping a beat.  _With what?_

Stan calls her. Wendy picks up on the second ring. "Stan!" she says into the phone, sounding panicked.

"Hey," Stan says. He mutes the television and puts down the chips. "So, uh. I need your help with something."

"Anything," Wendy says. Stan wonders if she still likes him. It's been almost four years, but he's been hung up on Kyle for that amount of time, too, right? Ever since he was the only one that didn't abandon him when Randy died; ever since he rolled over in bed one morning, saw Kyle all lit up in the golden morning sun and realized that this is what he wants every day, always.

"So, uh." Stan coughs. "This is, um, not easy. But. Kyle—Kyle and I—look, we're in love with each other, we kissed, I cried, I walked out on him, he hit me, he cried, he told me I was disgusting, and now here we are."

There is silence on the end of the other line. Then Wendy says a very long, "Okay." More silence, and then, "Stan, I think we should meet in person to talk about this."

"That's fine by me," Stan sighs into the phone. "Can you just come over to my house?"

Wendy arrives like a hurricane, wind and leaves blowing around her, an obvious force. Just her presence makes Stan sit up straight and wish he'd changed out of stained sweatpants. She takes a very prim seat next to him on the couch, crossing her legs, her hands in her lap, and looks at him. She's so polished, not a wrinkle to be found in her clothes, her beret placed just right on her head. They've barely interacted since they broke up, exchanging shallow pleasantries when they see each other but keeping their mutual distance, but she looks good. Mature. Some recognition stirs in Stan, like looking at a picture of a fond memory you can't return to.

"Hi," Stan offers, weakly.

"I didn't even know you were gay!" Wendy says. She turns red. "I mean—"

"No, it's okay. I'm not gay." Stan sighs. "I like, you know, both. Whatever. It's just—"

"Kyle."

"Kyle."

Wendy unfolds her legs. Stan is watching her lose composure by the second. "Was his reaction—the hitting you and calling you disgusting—"

"Oh, he spit at me, too."

Wendy rolls her eyes in an exaggerated manner, then catches herself, straightening up. "Spitting at you. Was this all prompted by the fact that you walked out on him after you guys kissed? How exactly did you do that, anyway?"

Stan sighs again. It's so much talking, it's so much effort, it's so  _hard_. But he has to; he called Wendy and made her drive over here, he can't just be like, never mind, and turn her away. This is why they broke up, he tells himself, his dumb nonaction, his willingness to let life go by as if he were sitting on a curb while cars speeded both ways in front of him. "Uh, he was asleep. We fell asleep when I was, you know. Crying. And it's more about—well—I guess I feel like I'm too shitty for him and he's mad at me because I don't really. Do anything." Stan feels like he's just run a mile, like he could drop and sleep for hours, just from that.

Wendy takes a few thankful minutes to process that. She takes her beret off and readjusts her hair; Stan notices she doesn't put it back on and wonders what that means. He's still paranoid that there's leftover feelings between them—is he inventing that? He really doesn't know. Would he sleep with her, if she asked? Why would that even be a viable option, why is he thinking about that? Wendy speaks, thankfully cutting his thoughts off:

"You guys have been friends forever, right?"

"Yeah." Stan looks down at his hands. "Since infancy. My first memory is giving him a toy to share during a playdate."

A pained expression passes over Wendy's face; Stan can't help but mirror it. They share in their separate yet mutual despair for a second before Wendy speaks again. "So you know you two get along and whatever is happening now will pass."

Stan shrugs. "What's been happening now has been happening for four years."

"Does this have to do with your father?"

Stan closes his eyes. He doesn't want—doesn't know  _how_ —to answer that question. It's easy to sort his life into before and after and transfer the blame for his neurosis onto a single event executed by a single person that was not him. But even when he was supposedly happy, even when he was running around and catching balls and kissing Wendy under the bleachers, there was that thread of sadness that ran through him. There were incidents. There were days where he felt paralyzed by his own sadness. But after, he has stagnated, like he'd finally overexerted an old injury and it had given out. It can be both, he thinks. It can be both his fault and his father's; there's certainly enough blame to spread around.

As usual, Wendy takes his lack of response as a response and continues talking. "You're taking your pills, right?"

"Am I actively trying to kill myself?" Stan snaps back. Grief counseling had come by way of the police post-accident, when Stan was still dating Wendy, and of course she knows about the pills. But it pisses Stan off that she knows, that she feels like she has authority over this secret part of his life.

These feelings dissipate when Wendy says what she says next. "I don't know," she whispers, and she looks so  _sad_. So  _shipwrecked_. And Stan realizes that whatever feelings she has left for him are not romantic in nature, or if they are she has given up. Stan shouldn't be empathizing with her, should be stealing all of her empathy, but all Stan can feel is for Wendy.

"I'm sorry," he says.

Whatever Wendy was going through passes, her head snapping up. "Anyway, we're talking about Kyle. What your father did has nothing to do with you and certainly nothing to do with you  _and_  Kyle. I think you need to get over that mental block."

Stan's face slides back into the blank stare that he's become famous for. He has forgotten how confusing she can be, how infuriating. Wendy suggesting that he forget everything just to pursue a relationship with Kyle is ridiculous. All their advice is ridiculous. Anger comes back to him—they don't  _understand_ , any of them. If Stan were to let himself—if he were to touch Kyle of his own regard—he cannot. He will not spread his sadness around. He will keep it to himself. It's a sacrifice, one that scoops out his very soul, but it's for Kyle's best. Kyle is doing what Shelley had done, what should be done. Kyle is leaving and Stan will stay behind, because somebody has to, not just because it's the easiest route to take.

This is the revelation Stan has been waiting for.

But Wendy is still here and Wendy is still talking. "Stan, I don't know what to do about this. Why can't you just—talk to Kyle?"

"It's for the best," Stan says, certain of this now.

"It's for the best for both of you to suffer like this?" Wendy sighs.

Stan nods.

"You know, this is why I broke up with you." Wendy looks down at her nails. Stan braces for impact. But Wendy seems able to curtail whatever nasty things she wants to say—she's not coming at him swinging, not like Kyle, though Stan would prefer it if Wendy would just say what Stan already knows. That he's a coward. That he ruins everything he touches. That he's the worst person alive. Instead, Wendy picks herself up, says goodbye and leaves.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thinking this is going to be about 5 to 7 chapters long, we'll see. anyway, there's something that could be considered squicky in this chapter regarding a may-december, master/protege type relationship. everything's consensual, but be warned. this is coming from left field, i know, i know.

Sunsets have historically calmed Stan down. They might be nothing more than pretty, might not solve his problems, but they're a nice way to bliss out for a bit. Stark's Pond has the best sunset vantage point in all of South Park, and so a few days down the line when Stan is feeling particularly glum and nothing is working, he picks himself up and walks there.

It's nice outside, tepid, no need for a coat, though something in the air tells Stan it's going to get chilly after dark. The snow is gone but there's still a frosty morning on occasion. June; a good, happy month, Stan had read that it's the most popular for weddings. He knows of at least two high school couples that are tying the knot in the upcoming weeks, the thought making him feel queasy, as if marriage is an important homework assignment that everybody but him has under wraps. Thoughts of marriage and consequently love bring Kyle into his headspace and by the time Stan has arrived at Stark's Pond, his foul mood has turned downright putrid.

The sky has not yet to begun to change color but the landscape has been draped in a golden glow. Stan sits on a park bench and tries to relax, to meld into the fake, waxy wood. It's not working; he is restless, adjusting position every few minutes, scratching at his ankle. He realizes that he misses Kyle, that this was one of their spots before, that Stan wants him at his side now, and his mouth tastes bitter.

He hasn't heard from Kyle since Kyle hit him in the face. He has heard from Kenny (who Stan is still somewhat shunning from his offense against him) that Kyle is pretending not to even know Stan whenever he's brought up. That he's considering moving to Princeton early. It's what Stan decided he wanted, but now that he's had time for this information to sink in, Stan realizes he doesn't want that all. It's been a confusing and fevered few days.

The sun starts to set. Stan suffers through a bit of a burn in his eyes so that he can observe it in its full glory. Kyle always told him he was stupid for doing that, for looking directly at the sun, that he was going to damage his eyes beyond repair. Stan has always wished that Kyle would just butt right the fuck out of his sunset enjoyment. It's nice tonight, a seamless blend of pinks and oranges reflected on the surface of the lake. When Stan was little he thought the sun was descending into the water itself, providing light for all the fish to see each other by, the darkness above the surface discouraging humans from entering the aquatic world. He still finds that a comforting thought though he knows now that the sun has really just transported itself across the world, allowing people in far away places that speak languages far from Stan's own to wake up and move about their day. That's comforting, too.

Sunsets are comforting in general, bringing to mind his mother's arms enclosed around him after a long, hard day. Kyle's eyes crinkling with laughter. Breathing out after being underwater. A cold bottle of water on a hot day, pressed against his forehead, slipping between his lips. Summer; love; happiness; comfort; numbness. By the time the sun has sunk and everything is blue and the cicadas are out and singing, Stan feels relaxed.

This temporary nirvana goes away when he gets up, turns around and sees Kyle's New Jersey uncle crouching on the ground about twenty feet away, examining something. Stan, perplexed and feeling that it would be rude to ignore the guy, walks over to him.

"Stan!" Kyle's uncle stands up and wipes his hands on his pants. Stan sees that he's been hunched over a jar containing some bugs. "I didn't recognize you from behind."

"Hello, ah—?" Stan extends his hand and realizes he'd never learned the guy's name.

"David." David returns the handshake. He looks like a David with his thinning hair and paunchy waist. Though his eyes are small, hidden behind glasses and outlined by laughter lines, they are kind. Stan feels a kind of draw; David's hand is cool in his.

"I thought you were going back to New Jersey," Stan says after an awkward pause. That was what David had said when they had talked at Kyle's graduation party, at least; he was in town for the ceremony and would leave the next morning.

"My flight was cancelled," David explains. "When that happened I thought, well, I could get some data on the cicada in Colorado." He toes the jar of bugs by his side. "I'm writing a paper, doing comparative research on cicada in different environments. I didn't have any from mountainous regions yet."

Stan balks, nearly believing himself psychic and thinking back to the dream. "Cool."

"It is cool. I can tell you about it—you said you had an interest in biology?" There's something in David's eyes; a loneliness, maybe, that Stan recognizes, identifies and sympathizes with. It's getting darker by the minute, night settling over the surrounding wood, coniferous trees standing like brushes dipped in ink. Stan considers what his plans had been: go home, think about Kyle, sleep.

"Sure," Stan says. "Have you had dinner yet?"

And that is how Stan ends up living his dream, though not in the conventional sense. Going out to eat with David feels like playing pretend. He fakes his way through the conversation, acting as if he's older, as if he's not thinking about the guy's nephew and what he would think about this the entire time. It's exhausting and Stan feels increasingly antsy, certain David is going to discover what a huge piece of shit Stan is. They're not even at a restaurant, they're at a highway diner with gummy seats and unclean-looking floors. The yellowish fluorescent lights are making Stan's panic worse.

And after dinner is done, they're waiting on the check and David is asking if Stan would like to continue this conversation at a later date, Stan leans back and says,

"You know I'm gay, right?"

David doesn't seem surprised. He's tracing the rim of his empty glass of water, now just sad chunks of ice, with his finger. When he speaks, he stammers. "I suppose I knew that."

"Well, uh." Stan coughs. He wishes David would understand what he's trying to do, here. The first time he's been proactive in years. "We could, you know. Go back to your hotel. You said you had some stuff on your computer. I'd like to see it."

Stan braces for rejection and watches David's expression. He takes his glasses off and rubs them on the hem of his shirt as if he needs to see Stan more clearly to make his decision. The guy has no poker face—there's a flush rising from the collar of his sensible polo shirt and he's sucked the entirety of his bottom lip between his teeth, down to skin that bunches between it and his chin. This is inevitable, Stan tells himself while he waits. The inevitable outcome of his actions.

"I suppose so," David says. The check comes; David pays for it all on his card.

They'd walked to this little diner, David's jar of cicadas safe inside his messenger bag, but David calls a cab to take them back to the hotel. It's not in South Park but in an adjacent, larger town—South Park has no hotels—and a thirty minute drive but not nearly enough for Stan to process what he is doing. All he knows is that some of Kyle's blood runs through David's veins, that there are not that many degrees of separation between Stan and Kyle right now, and that stars seem to cluster over South Park.

David's hotel is nice enough: locally owned, three stories, squeezed between a strip mall and a major road. David's room is on the second floor, offering a lovely view of the back parking lot, and his room is nothing more than a bed, a kitchenette, and a miniscule hallway with a bathroom stashed behind it. Small but clean, a ceiling fan spinning over the bed and a generic painting of some mountains mounted across from it. The walls are the type that are raised with small bumps, inanimate gooseflesh; Stan drags his hand along it as he walks to where David is sitting on the bed, taking everything in through osmosis, the both of them.

"I didn't think I was staying that long," David says as though that's an excuse for the paltry hotel room. He reaches for his laptop, charging solitarily on the bedside table. Stan sits beside him and lets their thighs touch. After a few quiet minutes of looking at close-up pictures of various cicada anatomy and a handful of graphs that compare then, David touches the small of Stan's back.

Kyle, Stan thinks when he's on his back and David is naked above him, prepping him for penetration, this is what I do without you.

David showers praise upon Stan while they have sex. It's not making love, that would be ludicrous, and it's not quite energized enough to count as fucking; it's just David thrusting and telling Stan he's the most beautiful boy he has ever seen—using that word, too, boy—while Stan curls his hands around David's back and makes small noises of something maybe like pleasure. It's sleeping together, perhaps. It's perfunctory. It's wiping away a dirty surface soiled by loneliness. Stan comes thinking about how some of Kyle's DNA lives inside of this man, in his blood and his semen, and that soon Stan will have some of that DNA inside of him, too, a trinket.

"Was that your first time?" David asks, lying on his back beside Stan after they're finished. Stan is curled like a comma, cock softening, his head on folded hands, facing him.

"It's whatever," Stan sighs. David starts to snore.

Stan can't sleep, though. He feels come leaking out of his ass for a while, onto the hotel sheets that have probably already been stained beyond any sort of purity, and observes David. He's forty-three, Stan has learned, Gerald's brother. His hair, thin as it may be, retains all of its color—a boring brown that keeps reminding Stan of Clyde Donovan. Harsh comments keep coming to Stan, judgmental things, though he doesn't regret having just had sex. A kind of unjustified hatred is forming and thrashing in his stomach.

Eventually he gets up and goes into the bathroom to piss and wash up. He doesn't shower, but he does dampen a washcloth, first dragging it across his face and then cleaning his ass out the best he can. He looks at himself in the mirror and tries to find a difference. All he can see is nothing, as usual.

Then he goes back out and gets David's laptop. It's not password-protected, stupidly; Stan reviews the rest of the cicada data and makes his own notes in blue text, things like this ones legs slightly longer and wings less translucent. Qualitative, empty things, David's snoring serving as background music. It's cold in the hotel room and even colder outside, a combination that makes Stan shiver and screw up a lot in his typing, that makes him feel downright insane. His ass is sore and he's typing dumb notes about cicada; Kyle would laugh about it, maybe, in a few years after everything has settled and faded.

Around three in the morning Stan grows tired enough to curl back up and go to sleep. His quality of sleep is not well; he keeps waking up disoriented, unsure of where he is and having to remind himself that he's just slept with Kyle's uncle, a sick weight dropping in his stomach. David rouses early, at seven, and takes his laptop into his lap. His soft laughter at Stan's notes is what pulls Stan out of sleep for good and they have sex once more, Stan topping this time, David on his stomach so Stan doesn't have to look at his face. His glasses are safe on the bedside table and he looks a little more like Kyle without them.

Over the next few days Stan learns the bare bones of cicada science, helps David collect specimens, eats lunch and dinner at the diner and has a lot of sex. He's basically moved into David's hotel room, knowing that he is missed by nobody, wearing David's clothes, and he spends a lot of time staring out the window at the parking lot. It's so empty; who wants to come to a mountain town in Colorado for the summer, unless to violate young men and study bugs? Violation is not what is occurring—David is big on kissing and holding, Stan desperate and receptive for it—but the nasty thoughts just won't coming to Stan, an illness.

"I feel like a princess you're keeping captive in a tower," Stan grumbles to David one night during sex, somewhat disappointed by the way David's cock lurches at this notion.

But all good things must come to an end; two weeks later David has collected sufficient data and is returning to New Jersey. Their affair is ceasing, the smell of sex in this hotel room to be wiped away with industrial products, David to fly across the country, Stan to walk with his tail between his legs back home. He's more emotional about David's departure then he thought he would be. It's not that he's fallen in love with David or anything silly like that—he's still imagining Kyle most of the time when they sleep together—but the unjudging companionship has been nice. Peaceful like a vacation, Stan able to push all of his worries away when they come knocking, knowing he doesn't have to deal with them at the moment. Plus there's something almost like a spark of interest and happiness that kindles in Stan's stomach whenever they're doing work with the cicada. Stan likes the way his hands get dirty when he's looking for them, likes the way they release them when they're finished with their work, each cicada's life left intact and David satisfied.

David is coy the night before he is to depart. They're by Stark's Pond, watching the sunset, sitting close enough to touch but not holding hands. The sunset is not the most spectacular Stan has seen and he's distracted, anyway, by the emotions that are tussling for dominance in his chest.

"I have a bit of a wild idea," David says, turning to Stan and taking his glasses off to clean. Stan has recognized this as a nervous habit of David's, especially when it comes to sex, and quirks his eyebrows. "As this is my last night here—would you like to have sex in the woods?"

"Yeah," Stan mumbles, looking back at the sun. "That'd be cool."

Making love in nature with Kyle is Stan's top fantasy. In his mind they'd be in a clearing ringed by wildflowers of every colors, deer and does skirting around them as they travel through, squirrels in trees with their backs to them out of respect. It would be midday, the sun lighting up a roadmap on Kyle's body for Stan to travel on. There would be birdsong and the gurgle of a stream to serve as background music. But most of all there would be Kyle, red hair and pale skin, delicate eyelashes and thin wrists, clutching onto Stan with something between fear and longing. They'd be naked; Kyle would worry about the bugs and Stan would drag his tongue all over his body, as if his saliva could repel them, and Kyle would laugh, laugh, laugh, especially when he came. It's a fantasy too precious for jacking off, the details of the actual sex glossed over, and Stan only indulges in it when he wants to cry.

Sex in the woods with David is nothing like that. The cicada are humming a funeral march and they do not bother to get naked. David is on top, morose, and Stan is too emotional to come, though David doesn't seem to notice even with Stan sitting in his lap. David finishes with a pained grunt and collapses against a tree; Stan leans into him, David playing with the wisps of hair at the back of Stan's neck.

"I was in love, once, you know," David starts mumbling, so quiet Stan has to crane to hear it above the noises of the forest. "It was back in the 80's, when I was doing grad work in New Jersey. I was studying the migratory patterns of local seabirds for my thesis. He was a lifeguard on the beach—he had the late shift—and he started teasing me in the evenings. You know, because I was a weird and skinny kid that hated the beach but came to study science. Anyway, he said he was straight, but we slept together on the beach and everything. It was—" David's voice knots together, something unravelling against a wall until it has nowhere to go but backwards, upwards, sideways, everywhere but forward.

This is playing every one of Stan's heart strings and he suddenly wants to kiss David's face and tell him he loves him now, though that would be preposterous. "What happened?" Stan asks, instead, sitting up so he can look into David's watery eyes.

"I finished my thesis and he started dating a nice girl. They're married now, kids and everything. I haven't spoken to him in years." David is quiet for a long stretch of time. "He looked like you. Black hair and blue eyes, tan from the sun. The most beautiful boy I've ever seen."

Stan sighs and gently extricates himself from David's lap, taking a seat beside him with his back against the tree. He grabs David's hand and holds it in his, bringing it to his lap in an entirely nonsexual way. He thinks about confessing about Kyle, but feels that this would somehow ruin David's moment. Stan is fond of him in an abstract, distant way.

David's flight is too early in the morning to justify Stan returning to his hotel that night and sthey say their goodbyes at the edge of Stark's Pond. They exchange phone numbers and emails and David talks about trying to get Stan's name on the paper he's going to publish about cicada, but like the first time they had sex, it feels perfunctory above all else. Stan's mind is heavy and confused with thoughts of what has happened with his life on the walk home, too heavy and confused to make sense of anything, and he drops into bed and sleeps for what feels like days but is really just seventeen hours straight.

He wakes to a text from David, Made it home safely, and weeps.


	4. Chapter 4

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> this chapter took forever, sorry. one more after this.

Stan never texts David back, feeling their last dialogue to be sufficient closure. Still it is difficult to continue on without thinking of him; every time evening falls and the cicada start their chorus Stan feels a scratch of nostalgia against his skin, making him retreat into his bed and cocoon himself in his covers. It is Kyle that comes to mind, then, and how Stan is even more afraid to face him now, now that he'd gone off and lost his virginity to his gay New Jersey uncle who came to town for his graduation.

It is disheartening when people stop coming around for Stan, to try to tug him out of his self-imposed cocoon. Kyle and Wendy were the first to stop, what feels like so long ago, but even his mother and Kenny come to a halt with their efforts. Stan was able to slip away for two weeks with David, nobody noticing, nobody caring, and is met with the same response when he returns to his life. It's like he's a nonentity, something that fell through the cracks, all memory of his existence wiped out. Sometimes it's easy to convince himself he's died, this is Hell and he's making penance for his sins, but he's painfully, unfortunately, aware that he is alive.

Death, real death, is becoming an increasingly attractive option and yet some sense of loyalty to unfinished business keeps Stan around. It's not David; that book is closed. It can only be Kyle, and try as he might, Stan cannot push this feeling out. It's not what he wants; it's the opposite of what he wants. All he wants is to sit himself in a paddleboat and cut the rope that keeps him tied to shore, but Kyle is standing there with all the rope in a bundle in his hands at his waist, some sort of umbilical cord that Stan can't bear to sever. He tries to convince himself that Kyle would be better off without him and fails; Stan's always been selfish like that.

The logical next step is to talk to Kyle, but Stan's never fancied himself a smart man.

A man—is that what he is now? He's eighteen, he's had sex, but he spends all day in bed, reading comedy articles he can't muster enough energy to laugh at and napping intermittently. He supposes that by the dictionary definition that he's a man, but by anybody else's he's nothing but pathetic. His manhood, along with the rest of them, has slipped through God's fingers like something gooey and gross He picked up by accident.

This is how Stan spends the majority of his summer, passing the hottest months by in the serene coolness of his room. With the curtains stapled shut and his walls painted so darkly, it's nighttime all the time, the light of his laptop or his phone blinking across his face. His mom comes in occasionally to hand him a plate of food and a glass of water and collect the ones that stand around various parts of Stan's room, shrines to his despair. Every few days he takes a shower and changes into a fresh pair of boxers. And sometimes, if he's feeling particularly daring, he goes downstairs to watch television.

When he was a child—he slips under the current of nostalgia every once in a while—his summers were the complete opposite of this. From sunup to sundown they were stuffed with activity: amusement parks, water balloon fights in the street, building towns out of sand in the park with Kyle. There were birthday parties with lemonade and cake propped against the backdrop of a setting sun, temperatures plummeting into something bearable. He slept over at Kyle's, or Kyle slept over at his house, nearly every night, inseparable. They would lay on their backs on their beds in nothing but their underwear, young and innocent and nonsexual, cooling their overheated skin and laughing at each other's lame jokes. They always tried to stay up late but they always failed, tired from their long, overstuffed days, pressing their foreheads to each other when they were cool enough to whisper their final words for the evening. Kyle would fade away first; Stan would be met with a burst of general anxiety, then the realization that he was with Kyle and so everything was okay, and would follow.

As July turns into August and then approaches September Stan is painfully aware that Kyle will be leaving for college soon, too soon, if he has not left already. Stan doesn't have a job, hasn't even been looking for a job, has been living in limbo, while Kyle is about to go off and start life somewhere else, somewhere new, without Stan. Somewhere better. It's what Stan thought he wanted—if you love somebody, let them go—but all he wants now is to grab Kyle and bring him back, though he has neither the energy nor belief in himself to accomplish this. Selfishly, he wishes Kyle would come crawling back to him, pack him in his suitcase and let him live in his wardrobe at Princeton. He could survive off of scraps of food and scraps of Kyle's love, a machine with the barest amount of fuel poured into it.

It's not Kyle that comes to his rescue, though. It's Kenny.

Since Stan has last seen Kenny he's cut his hair and gotten second hole piercings, cheap-looking little plastic flowers growing from his earlobes. He shows up to Stan's house when his mom isn't home and knocks until Stan feels forced to get out of bed and goes downstairs. He can barely manage to raise his eyebrows when he sees Kenny on his porch, white teeth bared like a cornered dog.

"Goddammit, Stan!" he says as a greeting, pulling Stan into the light of day. Stan is still in his boxers but is too numb and surprised to feel exposed. Kenny's hand is tight on Stan's skinny shoulder. "I can't let this happen, I just can't. I want to, trust me, I'm  _tired_  of saving the day, but it's what I do, you know, I  _save_  things—"

Stan blinks and rubs at his eyes. "What?"

"We're gonna shape you up. It'll be cool. Like a Disney movie montage. You know,  _I'll make a man out of you_ , that shit."

"Kenny, what are you talking about?"

Kenny groans and shoves Stan back inside his house, coming in himself and slamming the door behind him. Stan feels threatened in a vague way, what with Kenny glowering at him like that and looking so unhappy to be here, but Kenny does not harm Stan, only walks to the Marsh's living room and sits down on the couch. Stan follows. He watches as Kenny stretches himself over the Marsh couch; his boots are muddy from a recent rain shower and Stan thinks about how much Kyle would hate that. Kyle is a stickler for cleanliness, especially in regard to clothes, and Stan is feeling on the verge of tears.

"Step one," Kenny says from the couch, "stop looking like you're going to cry all the fucking time."

"I am going to cry all the fucking time," Stan says, taking a cross-legged seat on the floor, as Kenny has left no room on the couch.

"Step zero," Kenny corrects himself, "stop crying all the fucking time. Or, rather, that's the  _point_  of this whole exercise. To make you stop crying, or looking like you're crying, so you can face Kyle."

Stan swats at his eyes as though tears are imminent, but he's more perplexed than anything. "Okay," he says, unsure of how to continue.

"Okay, cool. Step—two? Fuck it. Stan, you can't be a hermit."

"I'm not a hermit."

Kenny sighs a very long, suffering sigh and drapes a skinny forearm across his eyes. Laid on the couch like that, it reminds Stan of hysterical heroines in 19th century romance novels, the types of things Kyle claims to enjoy  _ironically_. Stan is pretty sure he could look at a blank wall and find something that reminds him of Kyle in it. He wonders if he should voice that to Kenny, in the spirit of helping himself, but Kenny's already talking. "You kind of are a hermit, Stan. When was the last time you went outside?"

"This morning," Stan responds on instinct, the sarcasm bitter on his tongue. "Uh—a few weeks ago?"

"Try more like a few months. I've been staking out your house."

"What?! Don't you have something else to do?" Stan nearly falls over; the way his heart starts to race, his chest throbbing, it's is the most emotion he's felt since David has left.

"Not really. My condition makes it hard to hold down a job." Kenny groans and shifts slightly, aimlessly, his eyes still covered.

"What condition?" Is it wrong that Stan wants Kenny to tell him something horrible? Is it wrong that he wants to feel his heart sink into a pool of acid in his stomach, eaten up but proving life? Is it wrong to want to feel? Yes, Stan knows, yes.

"It's not life-threatening," Kenny says with a weird exasperation. Stan is almost disappointed. " _Anyway_. Not leaving the house isn't healthy, you know."

"I'm not healthy."

Kenny twitches, his leg falling off the couch, but recollects his calm. "Stan," he says through gritted teeth. "I am trying to help. I am not the enemy. Please do not talk to me like that."

"Sorry." Stan thinks he means it.

"Okay. So." Kenny finally lifts his arm from his head and sits up on the couch. He stares at Stan with weighted eyelids, either exhausted or curious, Stan can't tell. "Fixing you. Yeah. Okay. Basically, I think you need to stop being such a self-absorbed fuckhead and realize that you have people that love you, so, like, come back to life, please, Stan."

Stan gapes at Kenny, in disbelief that he thinks it's that simple. What does Kenny know about death, in any sense, anyway? And yet—what use would it be to point that out, to argue? Certainly Kenny being here is enough to prove that he cares about him to an extent—how would it benefit Kenny to bring Stan, the mess that he is, back into his life? And Stan is sure that Kyle loves him, he's just also sure that Kyle shouldn't love him. Kenny, for the way he's staring at him with dumb flowers in his ears and his bottom lip being rolling between his teeth, is not wrong. So, Stan says, "You're not wrong."

"I know that." Kenny brings his foot to Stan's cheek and nudges it, as he had done before Stan had the affair with David. A weird feeling flares up beneath his skin, like when a bruise is almost healed and you dig into it and feel something that's not really pain. Recognition, almost. The knowledge that something is there. "I don't know if you'll believe me or not, my friend, but there are people that love you and care about you in this world. That's more than what some people can say for themselves."

"You're making me feel bad," Stan grumbles. Kenny withdraws his foot but the feeling lingers. "I'm not—dumb, you know. There's starving children in Africa, whatever. What does that have to do with me?" Stan feels wrong as he says it, a pang of sympathy for the starving children in Africa passing through him.

"Who brought up starving children in Africa? All I'm asking is that you, like, reintegrate yourself into society. You can take baby steps, if you need to, but I'm worried about you." Kenny's eyes are wide and boring into Stan's own, a plea. Kenny's eyes are a weird sort of transparent blue, too light and always red around the edges, veiny and crazy at times. But all Stan can detect in them now is earnest honesty. He thinks of David, again, and of David's vulnerable eyes that he always hid behind his glasses. Stan's own eyes are transparent, those of a drowning man's. Kyle's eyes are different than all of theirs—they are the piercing eyes of strength, of a  _god_.

Thinking about this, of eyes and what they represent, pains Stan and makes him look away from Kenny's gaze. He feels—well, he feels bad, like always. Like all his thoughts are blending inside his head into something he doesn't like the smell of and doesn't want to drink. There is a wave of will surging inside of him. There is a desire to face Kyle, to look into his eyes, to share a smile and feel like everything will be alright. Stan is struggling with everything that he has inside of him, which is not much but is something, to let this wave pass over him, to let him absorb the strength it is bringing.

"I want to see Kyle," Stan says.

"Like—right now?"

"Yeah." Stan is hesitant to say it before he does, but once he does, he's sure in himself. "Like right now. I should shower first, though. Right?"

"Right." Kenny jumps up from the couch and grabs ahold of Stan's bony shoulder, pulling him with him. Stan hadn't meant to imply that Kenny was to come to the shower with him, but it's Kenny, so it's whatever, Stan figures. Up the stairs and into the Marsh's bathroom they go.

The shower curtain provides sufficient cover; Stan undresses behind it, flinging his boxers over the top, and turns the water on with him standing naked in the tub. He can see Kenny's shadow sitting on the closed toilet li, calmly redirecting Stan's discarded clothes into the laundry bin.

Stan likes his showers very hot. He has tough skin, resistant to everything but baby-cow-induced vaginitis, and he finds the cleansing properties of a nice, hot shower therapeutic and poetic in equal parts. He shivers when the first blast of warmth hit his skin. The water that skitters off his skin casts rainbows on the wall of the shower, and maybe everything won't be so bad after all.

"So what're you going to talk to Kyle about?" Kenny's voice is unnecessarily loud, even with the shower on.

"I dunno," Stan mumbles in return. "I'm just going to say sorry, you know?" He lathers shampoo into his hair, digging his fingernails into his scalp, wishing Kyle was here right now to do this very thing. They've showered together before, nonsexually, keeping their distance and styling each other's hair in ridiculous ways, their laughter bouncing around the bathroom. It's a painful memory. "Figure out a way to make this all work."

Stan gets a weird feeling that Kenny falls asleep while he's in the shower since Kenny becomes quiet and his breathing a little deeper and Stan uses this as an excuse to linger under the water. He's putting off seeing Kyle, he knows he is, but he's so  _scared_. He's never been scared of Kyle before, but here he is, scrubbing under his nails and biting his lip and being scared. The fact that Kyle hit him is a nonissue—he deserved that. He realizes he's afraid that Kyle will have, in their time apart, found the maturity that Stan has not, pushed all immature feelings of Stan aside, and moved on. The thought makes the water feel cold and Stan hurries to shut it off.

"Kenny!" he says, the loud one this time, peeking out around the corner of the shower curtain.

Kenny has indeed been asleep. He wakes with a jolt and throws a towel that's in his lap—when'd he get that?—at Stan. Stan takes it and wraps it around his waist, pushing the shower curtain aside to step out. "Have a good shower, Stan?"

Stan shrugs. He looks at himself in the mirror. "What should I wear?"

"Clothes'd be a good start. Or maybe not." Kenny rubs his chin like he's considering something great. Stan stares at him, unamused. "I'm kidding, Jesus! Remember that? Kidding? Joking? Fun?"

"No," Stan deadpans, and he exits the bathroom. Kenny trails after him.

In his room, Stan selects some inoffensive clothing—jeans and a flannel, of course—and dresses in them. Meanwhile, Kenny is moaning, laying on Stan's bed and watching Stan putter around in an attempt to eat up more time.

"I've never even had a girlfriend," Kenny says, and it sounds like he's talking to himself, "and yet I have to fix everybody else's relationship shit all the time. You know—I bet that's why I'm single. I'm too focused on other people's problems that when I go home I just want to jerk off and relax."

Something occurs to Stan while he's pointlessly straightening up books on his desk. It appears he's forgotten to return his science textbook. "Talk to Wendy."

Kenny gives him a weird look. "About what?"

"That."

"Jerking off and relaxing?" Kenny raises his eyebrows in a way that makes Stan want to take another shower. He walks away from the book and sits down on his bed.

"No. The other stuff."

"The girlfriend thing?"

"Yeah." Stan plays with his comforter, which is rumpled, filthy and smells a bit like his crotch. "I think she's lonely."

Kenny just shakes his head and laughs. "You gotta go, dude. Go get the other dude. It's cool, right? Like a movie? This is the penultimate scene. I just know it."

Stan goes.


	5. Chapter 5

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's done! i hope this is satsifying. sorry for the delay; college and all. anyway, i might make a soundtrack for this fic (to hit all those nice cliches) and if i do i'll come back and edit in a link at the beginning. also, i want to hear whether you think the ending is happy or not. that's not cryptic, i swear!

The road to Kyle's house is paved with good intentions, Stan thinks. And bad ones. And intentions of a neutral nature.

Every intention and everything, Stan has walked to Kyle's house with and for. It is the road most travelled by. School projects, weekend hang-outs, the fallout from his father dying—Stan has walked to Kyle's house with all of these thoughts buzzing around in his head, yet he has never been so nervous. It's kind of nice, really, feeling an edge of something besides dull nothingness. It sets his jaw and makes his hair raise.

The weather outside is balmy and beautiful, the gentle breeze coaxing him forward. An anomaly of a nice day, really. All signs are pointing north; all signs are pointing to something good. He will dawdle in his own mind, he will put off the reality he will have to face.

It hits Stan like a bucket of ice water thrown over his head when he's faced with Kyle's door. He holds out his hand, curled into a fist, an inch from the wood. He will have to knock; he will have to announce himself. The anxiety in his throat feels like a swallowed baseball he's about to expel. His fingertips and toes are tingling. He's going to have to knock. He's going to have to announce himself.

Something—some cosmic deity, some coincidence, some  _thing_ —saves him from this. The door opens and instead of hovering above wood his fist is hovering above Kyle's blue hair, as if he'd gone in for a punch and missed. Stan blurts out:

"It's time to talk."

Before Stan and Kyle talk, though, they do the shrooms.

It goes down like this: Stan blubbers out incoherent apologies that devolve into sobs while Kyle pats his back and keeps a professional distance. Then Stan asks Kyle if he still has the shrooms and Kyle says yes so Stan says let's do the shrooms and they go upstairs to drop them in Kyle's room. Kyle leads, his hand a flat, cool pebble in Stan's, like he'd picked it from a riverbed.

Sitting cross-legged, mirrored, across from each other on the bed, the shrooms between them like a treaty, Kyle plucks the first one and plops it on his tongue. It's a spectacle like all things Kyle does; he rolls his tongue around it, swallows, before making a face. "I hate that taste," he says, and Stan could cry, feeling back to normal. So Stan picks one up and does the same thing, though he doesn't mind the taste, has never minded bad-tasting things.

The high creeps up to them while they're still sitting on the bed, staring at each other. Kyle gets twitchy, his eyes beating in alternating spasms, his fingers scratching at his skin. Stan gets mellow, closing his eyes, feeling like he's being dragged along a soft beach by gentle waves. Or being buried by warm snow. When his eyes open they meet Kyle's and they start giggling, leaning into each other by instinct, their foreheads pressing against each other's.

Kissing comes naturally. Comes easily. Like breathing. Like when you remember that you're not doing it you feel pressured to do it even more and even better. It's just kissing, just lips against each other, a few curious tongues here and there, and Stan's not getting hard, he's too happy, and he thinks Kyle isn't either, and that's not offending him. It's like they're reuniting the universe when they kiss, like they're putting the sun and the moon's hands together. A bunch of other comparisons and similes come to Stan like a train wreck, piling up against each other at the front of his mind, because kissing Kyle is literally that good. That perfect. Time slips away and his legs and ass fall asleep but he's kissing Kyle, so it's okay. The atomic bomb could drop outside and it'd be okay, because he's kissing Kyle. This is how he wants to spend his final moments. Kissing Kyle.

The high ebbs and flows with the kisses and soon they're coming down, but not really, but enough that they start to feel sober because they really didn't drop that much and all that kissing has made them sleepy and slouchy-eyed. Kyle is beautiful, so beautiful, with dripping, pulsating red lips and his blue hair falling into his white face. He's all contrasts and heartbreak to Stan.

Kyle, ever present, bundles the shrooms back into their plastic baggie and sandwiches it between his mattress and his bedframe. Then he's inviting Stan to curl up in his arms, like a child, Stan feeling that strange cared-for feeling. Sick and paternal. "Come here," Kyle says, even though Stan is already there. Kyle pulls the covers up over them; they should feel uncomfortable in their clothes, Stan glad that he'd taken his shoes off before going to Kyle's room, but they're not. In fact, Stan feels the epitome of comfort right now. Its purest form, like somebody had distilled it, bottled it and slid it down Stan's throat.

Sleep is like kissing is like breathing.

They wake at the same time the next morning in stages, agitatedly, coming out of a mutually deep and beautiful slumber. Stan blinks away his crusty eyes and Kyle rubs at his nose, sniffling, because sometimes Kyle wakes up with a scratchy throat and a stuffy nose. Stan places a kiss to it; their skin is warm from their contact and they're all smiles, lying on their sides, their arms wrapped together.

Kyle speaks first.

"When I was a child and you were a child—"

"In a kingdom by the sea." Stan whispers bashfully, carefully, looking up at Kyle through his eyelashes, through his bangs.

Kyle is quiet for a few beats, but then he says the next line, fighting the smile Stan can see tugging at the corners of his lips. "We loved with a love that was more than love."

"I and my Kyle Broflovski."

Kyle laughs. Stan's favorite sound. He pulls him into his arms and kisses the bridge of his nose. Kyle relaxes into to it, then seems to remember himself, pulling out of Stan's arms and frowning up at him.

The shock of a realization has never been pleasant. Stan's never been an adrenaline junkie, never been a fan of the weightless feeling in his stomach that comes from twists and turns. The back of his neck is hot and itchy, and the space between Kyle ripping away from him and Kyle speaking isn't that big but it seems huge to Stan, the knowledge of what's about to come like an unceremonious brick dropped on the ground. Loud and painful and Stan wants to play dead.

"You can't recite poetry and come waltzing back into my life like it's nothing," Kyle says, and he pries Stan's hands off of him, sitting up in bed.

Stan is frozen. Braced. He'd been assuming everything was okay—that they didn't even have to talk, their shared joy while doing the shrooms and the way they had kissed making up for all that had come before it. But they are sober now and Kyle is somber, too, looking down at Stan with the weight of the world cradled in his eyes. Stan wants to scoop it out and place it on his shoulders and Kyle, too, bearing all his sadness, all his upset. Stan is used to it; Kyle is not.

"I slept with your uncle," Stan blurts out. Thinking about the weight Kyle carries lead to this, this ugly secret oozing out of him, pus from an open wound.

Kyle gets off the bed and steps back. His hands ball into fists; a defensive reflex, Stan knows. He takes these fists and rub at his eyes, and it reminds Stan of David, some trait in the Broflovski family line making them believe they could reach clarity through literal means. Then Kyle says, "My uncle? Uncle—David? The one you were talking to at my graduation?"

Stan nods. Whimpers like a kicked puppy, rolls on his back. Play dead, play possum.

"When?" Kyle narrows his eyes. "After you left me in bed alone? You went and fucked him?"

Stan shakes his head. Play dead. Don't speak.

"Then when, Stan!" Kyle is shouting. Stan doesn't know why the when of it is so important, but any illusion of happiness they'd been indulging in has shattered and they are left standing amongst the pieces, and he feels like he's sinking into the floor. He gets out of bed, a hand on the bedpost to steady himself, and he's taller than Kyle by a good five inches but now he feels like he's a foot shorter and still fucking shrinking.

"A few days after you hit me," Stan mumbles. "I saw him at Stark's Pond."

"What the fuck was he doing at Stark's Pond? What were you doing at Stark's Pond? You guys slept together? You know what, forget it, Stan—you're fucked. I thought you weren't, but you are." Kyle turns his visibly shaking back towards Stan, which doesn't make a lot of sense, since he's just facing the wall of his bedroom. "I can't fix you," Kyle says to the wall, and Stan's first thought is that it's easy to fix a wall, you just need some plaster, some paint and some drywall, but that's obviously not who Kyle is talking to.

"I don't want you to fix me," Stan says. There are tears gathering in his eyes; he wonders if they're in Kyle's, too. "I don't want you to have anything to do with me. I fuck everything up and I hurt you."

Kyle turns around and Stan's suspicions are confirmed: there are tears streaming down his reddening cheeks, his lips trembling. He looks cold, even though they're still overheated from sleeping together in their clothes, the front of his shirt damp with sweat. "You do," Kyle whispers. "You hurt me so bad. But I tell myself that maybe if you're hurting me you're not hurting yourself, and that's okay, and—I was almost over it, Stan! And then you come here and  _you fuck it all up_!"

The last part, the part that Kyle shouts, reverberates through Stan. He has nothing to offer.

"You come here, you do shrooms with me, you hold me—" Stan does not point out that Kyle actually held him, nor that they kissed in between those two events—"and you fuck it all up! Goddammit! I just want to love you, Stan! And be loved by you!" Kyle is running out of steam, and softly he says: "With a love that the angels coveted you and me. Or whatever."

"Annabel Lee dies," Stan says. "I don't want you to die. I'm the one who should die. I'm the one who fucks it all up." His hands are curling into each other, sobs fighting their way up his throat. "I ruined you, Kyle. I ruined the best thing on this planet."

"You're the best thing on this planet," Kyle mutters. "Or—you were. Before."

"Before." Stan repeats it hollowly.

"I know what your dad did fucked you up," Kyle says. He's looking at some point over Stan's shoulder, his jaw slack. "I know you've always been fucked up. You destruct yourself. You destruct me. You fuck my uncle, which I still can't believe—why? But why  _not_ , right?"

"I don't want you to go," Stan says, his second awkward blurting-out of the day. "I want to follow you. And I can't."

"You can't," Kyle repeats.

"I can't accept that." Stan sits back down on the bed. As if by gravitational pull, Kyle is coming over to him, sitting beside him, so close their sides press into each other. "I kept telling myself it's better. But it's not. Without you, what am I going to hurt?" Sobs are wrenching themselves out of Stan, ugly demons bursting forth. "But it's not fair to you. To hurt you instead of me. I always thought that you could take it."

"And I could dish it right back out," Kyle says. His voice is quiet but he sounds proud. He's wiping at Stan's cheek, wiping the tears away. He runs a finger around one of Stan's eyes, the ghost of the bruise he'd left him weeks ago. "Mutually assured destruction."

Stan nods, imagining him and Kyle standing by rockets, facing each other, fingers on the triggers. They're quiet for a few minutes.

"I need to go, Stan." Stan understands that Kyle means go away, go to college, and not that he needs to leave in this moment. "And you can't. There's no other choice."

"Just tell me what to do," Stan says, "and I'll do it."

"Get help." Kyle whispers this into Stan's ear like it's something sensual, a sweet nothing.

"I've had help. I need  _you_."

"You have me, Stan." Kyle takes both of Stan's hands in his and looks at him. "You've always had me, since I were a child and you were a child, don't you get it? Don't you fucking get it? You can have sex with my uncle and I can go away but this—" Kyle squeezes Stan's hands—"Is unconditional."

This is the point where Stan should feel sick, should think about his father, but all he's thinking about is the warmth of Kyle's palms and the sincerity in his face. He's thinking about summer nights as children, about the cicada singing them to sleep as they camp out in their backyards. He thinks about reciting Annabel Lee back and forth to each other for their eighth grade English class, before, and he remembers feeling so moved by the poem, so stricken. The realization he was in love with Kyle; the awkward dancing around, the hope it would go somewhere, the questioning and burgeoning and blossoming. And his father driving drunk and fucking it up, and Stan fucking it up again and again and again.

"I'm so sorry," Stan says. He's so tired, too, falling forward into Kyle. Kyle wraps his arms around him. "God, Kyle. Will you ever forgive me?"

"Nothing to forgive," Kyle murmurs into Stan's hair. "Let it all out, Stan. Let it all out. We've talked. It's okay. We'll be okay."

It's the last time Stan sees Kyle that summer.


End file.
